The e-documentation of Cultural Heritage (CH) assets is inherently a multimedia process and a great challenge, addressed through digital representation of the shape, appearance and conservation condition of the heritage/cultural object for which 3D digital model is expected to become the representation. 3D reconstructions should progress beyond current levels to provide the necessary semantic information (knowledge/story) for in-depth studies and use by researchers, and creative users, offering new perspectives and understandings. Digital surrogates can add a laboratory dimension to on-site explorations originating new avenues in the way tangible cultural heritage is addressed.

The generation of high quality 3D models is still very demanding, time-consuming and expensive, not at least because the modelling is carried out for individual objects rather than for entire collections and formats provided in digital reconstructions/representations are frequently not interoperable and therefore cannot be easily accessed and/or re-used or preserved.